In the Heat of the Bite (2 page)

Rhiannon slipped out into the dark night. She was quite used to skulking about under the moonlight. And with her powers, she had little fear that anyone would accost her and do her harm. So, she took a short walk to Hyde Park, where she could take a seat on a bench alone and plan what she would do next.

She hadn’t expected her aunt to ask her to stay with her. In fact, Rhiannon had already sent her belongings on to Thorpe House in Berkeley Square, the home of her coven sister, Caitrin, now the Marchioness of Eynsford, and her wolfish husband, Dashiel. Rhi supposed she probably should have mentioned as much to Cait, but her friend would forgive her popping in unannounced since they hadn’t seen each other in months.

Cait would welcome Rhi into her home, unlike Aunt Greer.

In all honesty, she hadn’t expected Aunt Greer to welcome her with open arms, but couldn’t her aunt at least have allowed her to
see
Ginny to be sure she was all right? Rhi sighed. Apparently not. Aunt Greer had treated her as she always had. Not as a revered member of the
Còig
. Not as someone with superior strength and cunning. Not as someone capable of being loved. She treated her as something vile. Something that should be squashed from the face of the earth.

A lone tear trickled down Rhiannon’s cheek as a raindrop landed atop her head. Fantastic. She’d be drenched within moments if she didn’t pull herself together. Yet the longer she sat there, the more distraught she felt and the angrier she became.

Rhi jumped to her feet. The wind swirled around her, raising her hair and the trailing end of her traveling dress in its haste to circle her. She glanced about the park. Thank goodness she was alone. She could have the devil’s own temper tantrum, and there wasn’t a soul to watch. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed overhead. Rhiannon raised her hands in the air and called the wind and the rain, stirring it to the point where she was drenched within seconds.

She felt only slightly better. So, she stomped her feet and the air crackled with her anger. Better. Much better.

Despite the chit lounging across his lap, Matthew Halkett, the Earl of Blodswell, had more than a meal on his mind. He needed to find his new charge and be sure all was well with the newly reborn Scot. Alec MacQuarrie had turned out to be more work than he’d ever expected. When Matthew had first met the gentleman in the lowlands, the Scot had seemed a gregarious sort; and when they’d become reacquainted later in the Highlands, Matthew had no idea the man had since suffered a broken heart. If he had known, that might have altered Matthew’s decision to turn MacQuarrie into one of his kind. Now the damage was done, and Matthew had to deal with the consequences, even if it meant following the younger man from room to room as he learned to use his new baby teeth.

Matthew lifted the wench from his lap, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and thanked the woman with a soft smile. She curtsied quickly and said, “It was my honor, sir.”

Of course, he’d brought her great pleasure before he’d pulled his incisors from the nape of her neck. That was very much the reason why so many women lingered around
Brysi
, the gentlemen’s club for those of his kind. They craved the emotion and satisfaction a vampyre could bring. And almost all of them were in it for the pleasure, if not for the coin. He rarely even had to enchant them to make a meal of them. Or to draw one beneath him. Or to do both at once.

“Have you seen Mr. MacQuarrie about?” he asked as she adjusted her clothing.

“He’s abovestairs with Charlotte, I believe. I saw him go up there just before you arrived.”

He pressed a coin into her palm. “How many of you has he enjoyed tonight?” he asked casually, dreading the answer.

She giggled. “Quite a few. The man is insatiable.” She shivered delicately. Obviously, she’d been with him recently, if her reaction was any indication.

Matthew sighed. “I’d best go and find him.” He left the chambers and started for the stairs. If he waited for MacQuarrie to be free of the Cyprians who lined these halls, Matthew would have to wait decades. Thankfully,
Brysi
was a safe place for the newborn to test his mettle. Matthew glanced in doorways and down corridors until he finally heard the guttural sound of the man’s voice when he moaned.

“Don’t,” a woman cried.

Oh, good Lord. MacQuarrie could find trouble unlike any other. Matthew didn’t even knock. He thrust the door open and stepped inside. He paused when the paramour cried out again.

“Don’t… stop!” she begged.

So that was a cry of pleasure and not of distress. Bloody wonderful. Matthew wanted to snort.

MacQuarrie didn’t even bother to look up. He had a blonde straddling his lap, where he lifted and lowered her slowly, her bodice down around her waist, her dress up around her hips. Damn it to hell. Matthew hated walking in on scenes like this.

Yet something about it made him pause. A thin trail of blood dripped down the woman’s back from where the infernal Scot had failed to seal his lips across her skin properly before he sank his teeth into her.

“Please,” she begged, her voice raspy and strained. She glanced over her shoulder and was fully aware that Matthew was in the room. “Please finish it,” she cried. She didn’t make a move to cover herself. Or to remove herself from MacQuarrie’s swollen member.

“Make the seal and finish the chit,” Matthew grumbled. He’d told Alec the same bloody thing over and over. She was waiting for the seal, for the transfer of emotions between them, for MacQuarrie to share his desire with her and take her pleasure in return.

Alec looked up and spoke around the woman’s flesh. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to feel it. This is enough for me.” He mumbled against her skin, but Matthew heard every word.

“It’s not enough for
her
.”

MacQuarrie shot him a look that told him to go to the devil.

What was a mentor for if not to teach? “Finish it,” Matthew commanded.

“Bloody hell,” the man said as he leaned forward and sealed his mouth over the bite with fervor. The chit cried out in ecstasy, and Matthew turned his head to avoid seeing MacQuarrie shudder beneath her.

What was he thinking? The blasted Scot was in no condition to leave
Brysi
, at least not at the moment. Matthew sighed again. Damn if he wasn’t doing that a lot lately. And he didn’t even need to breathe. “I’ll be back in a few hours, but I expect you to stay here. And to stay out of trouble,” he warned as he turned and left.

Alec MacQuarrie’s laughter followed him all the way down the corridor. Keeping that man out of trouble was like trying to return a whore to chastity.

He slipped from the club out into the night and walked and walked until the scenery of Covent Garden disappeared behind him. He needed to clear his head and decide what to do about his charge. It had been much easier when he’d tutored Kettering in this life a few hundred years earlier. Was he getting too old to deal with the foolishness of youth? Or was this generation of man particularly trying?

Before he knew it, he’d walked all the way to Mayfair and yet still had no idea of how to continue. Out of nowhere, a crushing wind nearly knocked him from his feet. He braced himself. What the devil? He’d never seen a storm come on so quickly, and he’d seen more than most.

That was when the rain started in earnest. Only moments before, the stars had been twinkling in the sky. Yet now, thunder crashed and lightning flashed. Hail clattered on the cobbled path where he walked. He covered his head with his arm and ducked beneath a tree.

That was when he saw
her
. Standing directly in the middle of the fray was the loveliest sight he’d ever seen in his life. Her black hair was slicked back with water but it trailed all the way down to her waist. Her gown was pasted to her body, sodden with water. She laughed loudly and sardonically as a bolt of lightning flashed at her feet.

The chit was likely daft. Didn’t she know better than to stand out in the rain? Likely, she would be killed by the ferocity of this sudden storm if he didn’t intercede. Matthew dashed across the park to where she stood. She clapped her hands in time with crashes of thunder that made even him jump. And looked ridiculously pleased by it all. She didn’t even see him as he bolted toward her. Had she escaped from Bedlam?

He yelled over the wind and thunder. “Miss? Are you all right?”

She spun to face him. “Oh!” Her eyes flashed with the same ferocity as the storm. Yet the wind calmed and the thunder stopped crashing when her hands dropped to her sides. Then the beauty brushed the sodden mass of her hair from her forehead. “Who are ye?” she asked.

Her Scottish lilt nearly startled him as much as the tone of her voice. She sounded like she’d recently been crying, but with the rain that continued to fall, he couldn’t tell if her cheeks were wet from more than just rain. He found himself with the absurd desire to reach out and brush her cheeks dry with the pads of his thumbs.

“Doona tell me ye’re some knight in shinin’ armor come ta save a lass from the storm?” She laughed loudly, the tinkling sound of it making him want to smile with her.

“Well, actually…” he started. He
was
a knight of old. Or he once had been. Before his first death, but that was well over 600 years ago. Matthew shook his head. “…I was concerned to see a lady about to be overcome by such a vicious storm. I thought I’d rescue you.”

The storm clouds lifted. The rain stopped. She glanced down at her drenched gown, which now hugged her body like a second skin, and crossed her arms in front of her chest. And that was when he realized it. She wasn’t
caught
by the storm. She
was
the storm. Saint George’s teeth! She was a force to be reckoned with. She was one of
them
.

Rhiannon looked at the sodden ground beneath her feet and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. After all, she was fairly certain the handsome gentleman before her wouldn’t appreciate her levity at his expense. Still, it was a chore not to giggle at least a little. No one had ever tried to rescue her from her own storm before. Even those in Edinburgh who didn’t know she was the source of such occurrences tended to leave her alone in the midst of ferocious winds and pouring rain, more concerned for their own safety. Yet this gentleman had braved the storm to rescue her?

The Sassenach was clearly out of his mind. Or too noble for his own good. Slowly, she lifted her head to peer at him once more. His dark hair was wet from the rain until he shook his head, scattering raindrops about. His hair then curled up a bit on the ends. His strong jaw with a little cleft in his chin seemed well set and determined. But his dark-as-night eyes made Rhiannon suck in her breath. There was something eerily familiar about those eyes. It was almost as though she’d seen them once before in a dream that had ended poorly.

She took a step backward as a sense of foreboding nearly overwhelmed her. The gentleman was more than he seemed. Much more. He was dangerous. She could feel it in her bones, especially when he frowned at her like he was doing now. “Well, the rain has stopped. So I doona need ta be rescued any longer.” Rhi backed up again, only to have her right slipper sink into the muddy, grassy earth with a slurping sound. Perfect! She’d ruined a perfectly good pair of slippers with her temper tantrum.

Before she could lose her balance, the gentleman was at her side in a flash and steadying her with a hand on her elbow. “Careful, Miss.”

Rhiannon gulped as she stared up into his obsidian eyes once again. Why did he seem so familiar? “Have we met, sir?”

Finally a smile tugged at those serious lips of his. “I am certain I would remember, Miss…?” His brow rose in question, and he waited for her response.

“Sinclair.”

“Well, Miss Sinclair of Edinburgh, I believe someone should see you to safety. Pray tell me you’re not out here at night all alone.” He began to tug her toward a well-worn path.

Rhiannon winced. She certainly was not about to admit to having sent her maid ahead with her luggage to Thorpe House so no one would witness her encounter with Aunt Greer. Especially not to a man she knew nothing about, not even his name. Wait! “How did ye ken I was from Edinburgh?”

She hadn’t told him where she was from.

“I know a great many things, Miss Sinclair,” the gentleman replied enigmatically. “Now, where is your chaperone?”

She dug in her heels, refusing to move one more inch. Thunder crashed in the sky above them. “Unhand me.”
Havers!
She didn’t even know the man’s name.

The handsome Englishman turned her to face him. One black brow darted upward. “You can harness your thunder. I’m not so easily intimidated.”

Harness her thunder? She couldn’t believe her ears.

He knew!
How could he know what she was? No one outside her own coven knew except family members. And this man—whoever he was—was certainly not family. Rhiannon tipped her nose back and leveled him with her haughtiest glare. “I doona ken what ye’re talkin’ about. Have ye been imbibin’, sir?”